Friday, January 24, 2014

A Duke Professor on the Group of 88

This morning’s
Duke Chronicle features a highly
unusual faculty op-ed, penned by English professor Victor Strandberg,
criticizing the Group of 88. Yet the op-ed’s odd framing distracts from the
criticism.

Strandberg’s
basic thesis: since the money Duke spent on settlements with the falsely
accused lacrosse players would have been better spent on virtually any matter
relating to the university’s academic mission, and since the Group of 88’s
record played a key role in convincing Duke that it had to settle, the
extremist faculty’s conduct had a real cost for Duke students.

Strandberg
recalls events of spring 2006, when “a boiling tsunami of faculty rage”
culminated in the Group of 88’s ad; he now deems it “a mistake to launch this
ad into so supercharged an atmosphere.” Strandberg partially excuses the Group
of 88 on grounds that they were relying on Mike Nifong’s good faith. But that
rationalization, he notes, can’t apply to the “clarifying” statement—when,
after Nifong’s case had imploded, almost all of the Group chose to “republish
their earlier statement, as though no second thoughts were necessary.” The “clarifying” statement, in fact, not
only reaffirmed the Group of 88 ad. It also maintained that in spring 2006,
they had wanted to thank protesters whose stated motivations were fighting “discrimination
and violence,” motivations that the “potbanger” protesters with their “castrate”
banner had claimed, and affirmed that the signatories would never apologize for
their actions, as, indeed, they have not.

Strandberg concludes in the following manner: “Someone else paid for
that exercise of free speech, namely the phantom students who might have become
real Dukies with the help of that hundred million dollars. I believe in free
speech as much as anyone, but I do hope we will all consider who pays for it if
and when some similar situation again arises.”

This is a welcome, if belated, criticism of the Group’s extremism and
its effects. It’s hard to know how much covering for the faculty—as opposed to
covering for former SANE nurse-in-training Tara Levicy or ensuring that Richard
Brodhead, Larry Moneta, and other senior administrators would never be
cross-examined—accounted for Duke’s decision to settle. But given that the
settlement explicitly shielded the faculty from individual lawsuits, it’s clear
that protecting extremists in the ranks played some role in Duke’s legal
strategy.

Other sections of Strandberg’s op-ed, however, are a little odd. Strandberg
incorrectly suggests that payments to the falsely accused lacrosse players were
$20 million each. (Bernie Reeves of Raleigh Metro,
who Strandberg doesn’t cite,long ago
reported the total settlement was in the neighborhood of $18 million, a figure I
have no reason to dispute.) Strandberg argues that even half the actual amount,
however, would have been too high, since “innocent men who have spent 15 to 20
or more years actually in prison have received less than a million.” Is Strandberg
suggesting that Duke administrators or faculty or employees behaved maliciously
in helping to send other “innocent men” to prison for 15 years? If not, the
comparison makes little sense. Payments in such cases revolve not merely around
the actual innocence of the accused, but around the misconduct of the state or
other parties.

Was any
settlement necessary? According to Strandberg, no. The university should
have “quietly let the legal system do its work.” Why didn’t Duke take this
course? As he notes a couple of sentences later, “there was too much talk from
faculty and administrators of an inflammatory and legally liable nature.” In other
words: Duke faculty and administrators were legally liable, and the university
elected to pay rather than fight. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable
calculation.

A final oddity from Strandberg: he goes
out of his way to say that he doesn’t “blame our President.” His grounds for
such an evaluation? He recalls Brodhead “saying on television as the media were
going hysterical, ‘The three captains tell me they are innocent.’” (Strandberg
evidently doesn’t recall Brodhead saying about Seligmann and Finnerty that
whatever they did was bad enough, or the President’s guilt-presuming letter to
the Duke community in April 2006.) That said, Strandberg correctly recalls that
no faculty publicly stood up for the presumption of innocence in spring 2006,
though women’s lacrosse coach Kirsten Kimel did so.

All that said, and despite Strandberg’s very strange accounting of the
nature of the legal harms faced by the three falsely accused players, it’s good
to see someone point out that the Group of 88’s conduct had consequences.

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

As the comments to the Duke Chronicle piece make conclusively clear, Prof. Strandberg evidently failed to get even the most basic facts correct. How is it that Duke students stand for such pervasive incompetence -- let alone blindly misguided -- "rage" from their "professors"?

How else do you convince the nation of a need to be enraged enough to vote a certain way unless you make a big todo bout something that'll rile 'em in that direction (irregardless of whether it's true or not)?

This isn't an apology probably anyway - it is just Duke warning its ies to shutup if'n the current Mangum case turns in their direction. Probably.

A final oddity from Strandberg: he goes out of his way to say that he doesn’t “blame our President.” His grounds for such an evaluation? He recalls Brodhead “saying on television as the media were going hysterical, ‘The three captains tell me they are innocent.’”

Maybe he's trying to not create more enemies than he has to.

Not long ago I reread the beginning of DIW to refresh the feeling of uncertainty early on and when it changed. The most surprising event I didn't remember? A comment by you lauding Brodhead as one standing apart from the witchhunt.

Indeed: at the start of the case, I assumed (very incorrectly) that Brodhead was attempting to avoid a rush to judgment. That viewpoint was (obviously) wrong, in light of how we have learned much more of what was going on in the Brodhead adm. in late March 2006. In any event, the view was clearly untenable in light of Brodhead's 5 April 2006 and 20 April 2006 remarks, which Strandberg basically ignores.

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